This would be laughable to the point of making you sick if it was not so stupid

Terrorism Rehab? I do not think so and this is really a foolish idea.
Unless you are liberal and from the left side of lunacy. This goes along
with the 'logic' that after the terrorists in Gitmo spend some time there,
then it is safe to return them to there home country where they will
become farmers, camel herders, or slave traders but never return to their
old terrorist ways. Guess I am old school annd prefer the militray trials,
waterboarding, being found guilty and summarily executed.




From the Vancouver Sun

The future of fighting extremism around the world may lie in terrorism rehab, according to the World Future Society.

"It's sort of treating jihadism the way a lot of American cities have decided to treat drug addiction: as a behaviour that is curbable through counselling, as opposed to something that should be highly enforced with the death penalty," says Patrick Tucker, senior editor of the society's magazine, The Futurist.

"It's a behaviour that people adopt and you can prevent them with a clear and compelling argument for adopting a different behaviour and rely on their capacity for logic to make a different choice."

Saudi Arabia has already had surprising success with a pilot program that does just that, he says. In prison, jihadists undergo psychiatric counselling to convince them that using violence to bring about change is unacceptable, and recruits with little education get a chance to study and debate Islamic law.

About 3,000 prisoners have already participated in the program and achieved a rehabilitation rate of 80 to 90 per cent, Tucker says, with only a handful re-arrested for security offences.

Prevention programs in Saudi schools educate students about the dangers of terrorism with writing and art contests much as North American schools tackle the dangers of drugs, according to a report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"It's controversial because it sidesteps our passionate response to terrorism, which is that it's an absolute and total offence against all of humanity," Tucker says. "This really puts the onus on the United States and other Western powers to really follow through with the whole 'winning hearts and minds' thing and improve people's circumstances."

The success of the Saudi problem has inspired others, including the Religious Rehabilitation Group in Singapore. Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and the U.S. military in Iraq have started to use some of the tactics, according to The Futurist.

Demographic realities might make this the most effective way to quell jihadism in the future, Tucker says, because terrorism is most attractive to disenfranchised youth — the bulk of whom live in developing counties and whose numbers are on the rise.

"In the future, the world looks young and poor and that's the segment of the global population to whom radicalism is going to be most appealing," he says. "So it you decide to treat that entire group of people as though their entire political opinions are nothing short of a disease because they don't align conveniently with Western interests, you are setting yourself up for disaster."

About this series: The World Future Society, a Washington, D.C. think-tank founded in 1967, tracks future trends in technology, politics and society. This week, Canwest News Service highlights five of the organization's most fascinating forecasts for 2010 and beyond.

Hat Tip: China Confidential